Fabrika

“Fabrika” (The Factory) was the main presentation film in the “Fabrika” exhibition of EAA – Emre Arolat Architecture’s Aga Khan awarded Ipekyol Textile Factory in Edirne, Turkey. This short documentary style film tells the story of a single working day in the factory, from sunrise to sunset. The original film, as it was shown in the exhibition, had no opening or credits sequence and played in a continuous loop, seamlessly connecting the nighttime time-lapse view of the building at the end to the beginning of day at the opening. However, this remastered version with new color grading does have intro and outro sequences for online viewing.

The film strives to incorporate the industrial methods of textile production and the manual labor into the often overtly sterile yet impressionistic architectural visuals one always expects from a commissioned shooting, underlining the fact that the design of the building is not only the result of aesthetic concerns, but also functional ones. The musical arrangement by Erhun Erdoğan mimics the imagery in a very similar fashion, incorporating the sounds of the building to the upbeat electronic music, from the steam vents of the central heating to the countless sewing machines in the main hall, and from the noises of cutlery emanating from the canteen to the huffs and puffs of industrial-size flatirons; stating that this is a factory, after all – and a very progressive one at that.